Disclaimer: Nope, don't own them, although I would not be so opposed… ;)

Disclaimer: Nope, don't own them, although I would not be so opposed… ;)

AN: Look! An extra long part! That's the *END*!!!!!!

In a way…. g

Walking The Dividing Line

Part 19

Then I saw Quatre running towards me, his face tight and frightened as he stopped before me, taking me in.

"Alison! Are you all right?"

I sighed. "I'm fine, Quatre. I'm sorry I fell asleep."

He looked at me, the ghost of a weak smile coloring his lips. "It's all right, I figured you could use the sleep."

I nodded. He made no mention of Duo; I couldn't see him anywhere, now that I looked around, and I wasn't going to bring it up. I looked around, seeing that we were in another hangar, only this one was smaller than the previous one. The other mobile suit carrier was off to my left about 20 yards, its bay doors open to reveal the Gundams inside.

I didn't feel like asking where we were. I didn't feel like asking where anyone else was. And despite the fact that I had just slept, I was immensely tired.

"Can I… can you show me somewhere I can sleep?" I asked softly.

Quatre perked up at that, some of the worry draining from his features. "Of course!" he exclaimed, turning and leading me out of the bay and down countless hallways, all looking a lot like the ones in the previous base.

But then he ascended a flight of stairs, and opened a wooden door –

And sunlight spilled through; I blinked as I followed him up into what appeared to be a kitchen, in a perfectly normal-looking house. The countertops were clean and white and sparkling in the afternoon sunlight slanting in through the windows above the sink.

"Welcome to our new home," Quatre said, smiling a little wider now, as he led me through the kitchen, out into a foyer and up a flight of stairs. There was one hallway upstairs, with a bathroom to the right and rooms off to the left. I followed him to the end of the hall, counting three rooms on the way. He led me into the third, where a neatly-made bed sat beneath a large window, across from a simple set of drawers and a mirror.

"Here," he said, motioning to the bed. "This is your room. Why don't you get some real sleep, all right? You saw where the kitchen was, you can get something to eat when you wake up."

I nodded slowly, and sat on the bed.

"Are you sure you're all right?" he asked, looking down at me through his bangs, the worry still there behind his gaze. "I can stay if you'd like."

I shook my head. He had better things to do, and I knew it. I didn't need him to stay with me. I could take care of myself.

Right?

"No, I'll be fine."

"All right. I'll see you later," he said softly, and left, closing the door behind him.

I flopped back onto the bed, letting all the emotions and thoughts spill out of me as I stared at the white ceiling above me.

I didn't want to think about Duo. I didn't want to think about anything but sleeping…

But sleep would not come. I tossed and turned for what felt like hours; the sunlight was slanting steeper through the window when I finally sat up, resigned to the fact that although I was desperately exhausted, I could not sleep. I wasn't hungry, though, and I didn't want to risk going downstairs because I might…

Because I might run into Duo.

I sighed. This had to end. I couldn't do this forever. But there was something inside me that wanted to cringe away in fear at the sight of him, and there was something else that tended to coat everything else with that cool, empty anger.

I had to get over that. There was no way they were going to let me stay if I didn't.

But… how could I just *stop* being afraid of him?

I sighed again, flopping back onto the mattress, lying on my side and staring at the door.

I had to make Duo realize that it was over. I just couldn't… I couldn't do it again, I couldn't give him a second chance. I could probably learn to live with him, train myself not to be so afraid. I knew I could do that – mind over matter, that was all it was. But… I couldn't trust him so implicitly.

I couldn't let him touch me.

I shuddered, and sighed.

I turned over and watched the sun set behind the trees; wherever we were, it was thickly wooded and the sunset was beautiful from here, painting the sky with fire as I watched it disappear and give way to the pale moonlight that took its place. I stood, walking over to the window and gazing out over the trees before craning my neck upwards to look at the sky above, a deep velvet dome sparkling with diamond stars. The milky way painted a bright white splash right down the middle; I sighed, suddenly realizing just how lucky I was to be alive to see it.

I owed Quatre a lot, I thought. The little blonde was very likely the only reason I *was* still standing here. He had been the one to insist on my rescue, to stay with me and he was essentially responsible for my physical recovery. And for more than some of my mental recovery.

I realized I was smiling, a small, thankful smile at the thought of all that Quatre had done for me. And I wasn't going to throw it away – not when even Heero, even Wufei seemed to be willing to allow me to stay. I would get over my fear, if it took me a day or a week or a month or a year, because I wanted to help these boys do what it was they did to make their difference in the world. Sally was right – they *were* important, and they *were* doing the right thing. And it was all I could do to hope that they would let me help them.

The night passed slowly. I split my time between lying on the bed, half-asleep but never fully gone, and staring out the window as the constellations slowly marched above the sky, disappearing one by one behind the treeline until the pink wisps of the impending sunrise began to pale the velvet blackness in the east.

I didn't know what time it was – it was late summer, so the sunrise was still early but I didn't know when exactly. All I knew was that I was still exhausted when there was a curt knock at the door, causing me to jump.

I turned, heart still pounding at the surprise, and called, "Come in."

The door opened to reveal Wufei, carrying my backpack in one hand and what looked like a bundle of clothing in the other. His features were colored with his old annoyance, and I nearly broke out into a grin to see that. At least I knew what to expect of him, if he was back to scowling at me.

He had almost frightened me before, with that emptier look and those hollow words, despite their lack of sharpness.

"What is it?"

He dropped the backpack a foot or so inside the door. "There's a lot of equipment in the hangar that needs repair work," he said curtly.

He tossed the bundle at me; I caught it in my hands, the faded blue cloth soft against my raw skin.

"Make yourself useful. Winner is waiting downstairs."

And he turned and left, closing the door behind him.

I blinked down at the cloth in my hands, and then shook it out to realize that he'd tossed me a mechanic's jumpsuit.

Something inside my stomach fluttered – fear, or something else.

I got dressed and went downstairs.

* * *

And that's how it was. Day in, day out, I did nothing but work with the battered old equipment in the mobile suit bay. Most of it was simple enough – after studying nothing but suit schematics, however, the work was slow. But somehow I seemed to have a knack for it, and after enough tinkering around I could usually get whatever piece of equipment I had set my sights on to work.

It was an excellent learning experience: there were all sorts of machines, from scattered suit and weapon parts to a few old jeeps and radios, not to mention other communications and stealth equipment, some of which I couldn't even figure out the purpose of.

So there I worked, in the back corner of the bay with an assortment of tools and piles of old equipment, while the pilots diligently worked on their suits, upgrading them or repairing them as needed. I knew none of them would even think of letting me near their Gundams – well, perhaps Quatre would, and maybe even Trowa, and somewhere in the pit of my stomach I was uneasily sure that Duo would as well. But for the time being I was kept busy enough repairing most of the radio and monitoring devices so the pilots could use them.

Things had almost settled down into a regular routine, and I was doing my best to forget the nightmare of before and concentrate on the present. Heero was indifferent to me now, not hostile but not open either. He would come up to me, gruffly list off the parts he needed, and wait while I dug them out for him. It was a strange kind of relationship, but I was thankful for it.

Duo kept his distance, and I was actually thankful for that as well. Whenever I saw him around, he would just fall silent and look away – I could tell he was hurting, but there was nothing I could do for him. In fact, it was all I could do to wrestle down the fear and anger whenever I saw him. But time had weakened the fear, and the only thing I could do was to concentrate on forgiving him for something I knew he hadn't really meant to do, deep down. I was beginning to believe maybe I *could* forgive him. But things would never be the same.

Even Heero and Wufei tended to keep him at a distance, I'd noticed. I'd seen how the pilots had been completely ripped apart by this mess, and it hurt deeply to know that I had somehow been a part of it. But as I watched, things were very slowly being patched over, and that hope gave me the ability to slowly be able to look Duo in the face. To feel anything other than cold, choking fear when I did so.

Trowa and Quatre were much more open with me, and Quatre had even spent a few days tinkering down here with me, showing me how some of the more complicated equipment worked. He was just as supportive as ever, and he was the only one that really spent time with me when he wasn't forced to by the close proximity of the hangar. Not that there was much to do aside from work – the pilots had been running routine missions, adding to the pattern of work that we all seemed to have fallen into. This resulted in a lot of mobile suit work, as well as a lot of odd hours and not much "down time."

Wufei was pretty much the same as Heero – vaguely indifferent to me, but somehow he tended to seem less annoyed than he had been a month ago. He rarely spoke to me except to request parts or equipment, much like Heero, but I had also caught him glancing at me, or watching me work. It unnerved me, almost as if he still didn't trust me, even after all the work I was doing to prove myself. I much preferred him annoyed – at least I could deal with that.

It had been close to another month now; my broken ribs were nearly fully healed. My scars had darkened but still burned brighter than the rest of my skin, and my hair had grown just enough to be annoyingly unruly. I had just finished working on a particularly unhappy piece of radio equipment, probably so complicated because it was meant for long-range communications and had been burned out fairly completely. I shoved it aside, my victory immediately forgotten as I began work on a burned-out circuit board for Sandrock's stealth RADAR. It was the first piece of a mobile suit that I'd been allowed to work on; naturally Quatre had been the first to let me even touch anything directly related to his precious Gundam. I squinted at the board, reaching behind me for a pair of pliers. I wanted to do this right.

My fingers found the pliers, but they also found a hand holding them, handing them to me.

It must be Quatre, I thought, not lifting my head and bringing the pliers around to pull out a piece of wiring. It was a piece for his Gundam that I was working on, I didn't blame him if he wanted to watch.

"Thanks," I said absently, working on the next connection.

"You're welcome," Duo replied softly.

My head snapped around to see him standing over me, a kind of resigned look in his eyes.

My first instinct was to run, but I shoved that down within a second.

I blinked up at him.

"Hi," he said softly.

"…Hi." The knuckles on the hand gripping the pliers had begun to turn white; I loosened my grip on them.

"I was just wondering how it's going. You've been working here all morning, and I didn't see you leave for lunch," he said, his voice cool and casual but I could see something else in his eyes.

Hope?

I continued to try and calm the wisps of fear still swirling in my stomach; it actually seemed to be working, for once. My limbs hadn't cried out with the need to cringe away in fear.

"…Yeah," I stammered. "I was busy… Heero needed that," I said lamely, pointing to the radio I had just fixed.

Duo nodded. Silence fell thick around us, but only for a minute.

"Well, I was kinda wonderin'…" he began, one hand reaching behind his head, burying itself in the base of his braid, "if you wanted to get lunch, 'cause it's three, you know, and you probably haven't eaten since this morning. You know how Quatre would yell at you."

I caught myself smiling; I sincerely doubted Quatre would "yell" at me, but I knew what he meant – the Arabian was so insistent that I take care of myself that it was almost funny.

"It's three?" I asked, my mind trying to grasp at something other than fear and finding his words instead. I rolled up my left sleeve with slightly grease-stained hands and looked at my watch. It was indeed three in the afternoon.

"Yeah."

I took a breath, looked down for a moment.

I *knew* he didn't want to hurt me. I knew that he was "better," that he couldn't remember what he'd done, as if another person entirely had been the one to torture me. Sally had explained it in terms I had only half-understood in a call a few weeks ago; biology wasn't exactly my specialty, but what Duo had claimed had indeed been confirmed by her call – he didn't really remember doing what he'd done. It hadn't been *this* Duo that had betrayed me.

That had been a great help in getting over the immobilizing terror I'd been trying to push down. But the sight of him still set it off, and I was working even now to keep myself sane.

But… The best way to face a fear was to do just that - *face* it. I had to give him *some* sort of a chance. It would never be like it was before, I could never be that close to him again, but…

If Quatre had taught me anything, it was that everyone deserved another chance. I owed my life to that.

The Duo that I remembered, the one that had come before the one that had wanted to hurt me –

The one that had… he had done so much for me…

*He* deserved another chance.

I looked up.

"Yeah, sure," I said, and pushed myself up off the floor. "I am kinda hungry."

Duo looked shocked for an instant; then his face broke out into a wide grin. But I could see the relief behind it. It sparked in his eyes as he let me walk before him to climb the ladder out of the bay and head up to the kitchen.

We entered the kitchen wordlessly; it was empty and he went over to the refrigerator, pulling the door open and peering inside.

"Ummm…" he hummed, his voice casual but I could tell he was straining to make it so. "How about pizza? There's some leftover from the other day; it's all your major food groups in one fell swoop…"

"Sure," I replied softly, going over to the cabinets and pulling down two plates in an attempt to occupy myself before the fear had a chance to well up again. Because I didn't *want* to be afraid of him.

And so it was after a few minutes that I found myself seated across the table from Duo, staring at a plate of pizza. He sat, eyeing me worriedly, his smile doing nothing to hide the worry from his face.

I supposed I didn't blame him. If he… if he truly couldn't remember what he'd done, then he had every reason to feel that way. To wonder why things couldn't be as they were. But I was drowning in the fear of my memories – some of the only memories I *could* grasp hold of, ironically enough. Just another token of Giniko's presence in my life. Just another thing she had stained with that feral smile of hers.

The pizza sat untouched, the air hung unmoving, and the silence hung unbroken. It was weighing down on me, getting to me almost as much as the fear was, until it had overwhelmed even that and I had to speak.

"Duo, I – "

"You don't have to say anything," he said, shaking his head slightly. "I guess… I guess I know why you can't forgive me. I… you…"

His eyes traveled from my face down my arms; I'd rolled up the sleeves of my worksuit, and the scars still crossed my skin, pale and evident in the sunlight streaming through the kitchen windows.

I sighed. "Duo," I said; his eyes snapped back up to meet mine, the worry still hanging clearly in those deep blue irises. "I… it's not that I don't *want* to forgive you. I *do*. I do so badly – "

"Then just do it!" he insisted, his voice desperate and nothing at all like the voice of the Duo I wanted to remember.

I could suddenly feel a sliver of fear slipping away, seeping out in the wake of the terrible feeling that wanted to well up at the sight of him looking so lost, sounding so desperate for me to stop hating him –

I felt so terrible – there was this awful feeling in the pit of my stomach, this longing when I looked at him and I wanted only to make him stop hurting –

But if I felt that way, then hadn't I already forgiven him?

Maybe….

Maybe that was it. I couldn't feel this terrible for someone that I was afraid of. Because it wasn't *this* Duo that I was afraid of, after all. This Duo, sitting right here before me, was making me believe that the fear and hurt and desperation in his eyes were real. Not like the Duo before, not like the one with the knives and that sickly sweet smile. Not like the one with the eyes that held nothing human.

This *wasn't* that Duo.

I smiled. A weak, timid smile, but I managed it nonetheless. The trickle of fear that had been slowly winding its way out of my mind was growing into a stream, a larger flow, and my stomach was beginning to calm itself. The fear *was* fading, chased away by the thought of making the worry and fear in his own eyes leave. Maybe that *was* it. That *was* what this was all about.

"Maybe I have," I said softly. "I… I don't want to see you this way. Any more than you want to feel this way, I'm sure."

A real smile broke through. "Damn right."

I looked down. But even if I could forgive him – even then, he had to know…

"It's not going to work out, though. I can't… we can't just be what we were. I can't…" I looked up at him, and despite the loss I felt, I knew this had to be said, this had to be the way things were. "I can't stay with you. I can't do it. I…"

He looked down, shoved his pizza idly around his plate for a moment. "I know, Aly," he said finally. "I think I knew that. I'm sorry I was so… I'm sorry."

"Me too," I replied softly.

He looked up, and the sadness in those eyes was intertwined with hope. Happiness, of a sort.

"Well then, why don't we just be friends?" he asked. "We can do that, right?"

I nodded. "I think so."

His smile was contagious. And I was glad of it – I had missed that smile, I realized.

And I had missed being *able* to smile.

"Good." He ginned, and attacked his pizza.

I shook my head slightly and turned to my own food. That was it, then. Nothing more had to be said.

We could be friends. And that would have to be enough.